Wake Forest Athletics
Gold Rush Feature: Staying the Course
6/14/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Track and Field
June 14, 2011
This article was originally published in the May 21 edition of Gold Rush.
By Sam Walker
Three years and two hip surgeries indicated to Tyler Dodds that he wasn't meant to be a decathlete. When he came to Wake Forest, he had been a multi-sport high school athlete. As Dodds sees it, Deacon assistant coach Scott Hall saw a guy with athletic abilities that he might just be able to mold into a multi-sport track and field athlete -- a decathlete. But soon after training hard to become the best Dodds could at new and various events, his hip began to tell him and Hall otherwise.
"Out of high school, I was recruited to be an decathlete," Dodds said. "I had run the 100, 200 and the long jump, so coming to college I had to learn another seven events. Scott Hall was the one who recruited me, and I think he saw I played a lot of different sports in high school and saw a lot of potential in me as someone who could do well at a whole lot of things. There were certainly people who ran faster than I did in high school, but I played football, played lacrosse and ski jumped. I came in and did pretty well."
Dodds did have early success, placing 10th in the decathlon at the Wake Forest Open, and enjoyed being part of the 4x400 relay team. Over the summer, he continued to work, but he began to feel pain in his hip during certain events so after he returned to Wake Forest and it began to worsen he, "had it checked out," and that's when he learned he had torn cartilage. He said he went to Colorado and had surgery in December 2007 and followed with a redshirt year in both the 2008 indoor and outdoor seasons.
Dodds came back to compete in the decathlon again in 2009 and turned in his best performance of the outdoor season at the ACC Championship where he finished fourth with a personal-best 6,715 points and earned his first outdoor All-ACC award by finishing second as a member of the 4x400m relay team (3:08.60).
But the wear and tear on his hip caused pain to return, and following his sophomore season, his hip again was injured. In August, before the start of his junior season, he again had his hip surgically repaired and followed through again with rehabilitation. After that, the 400-meter run became the focus of his collegiate career and has been ever since. He ran a light indoor schedule and then came back strong when the outdoor season began, running a personal best 47.48, good for fifth in the ACC Championship as a junior.
This year, his senior campaign, has truly been the first full year of competition for Dodds since he was a true freshman back in 2007. And with a new director of track and field in John Millar now leading the Deacon program, they both wanted to do what was best for Dodds to be an impact athlete and keep him healthy so he could enjoy competition.
"Certainly when I first got in there was a feeling-out period," Millar said. "The first thing I noticed was Tyler had a tremendous work ethic, and I think that right off the bat he was very intense at what he did, so you could see he was driven to improve and to do things. So it was a pretty easy adjustment for me to ease into working with him. "
Millar, who had just been named to the position at WFU on Aug. 10, was informed of his injuries and unique situation by Hall, Dodds, as well as Wake Forest's athletic training staff headed by Greg Collins. The task at hand was to figure out how best to prepare Dodds to be an impact athlete in his fifth year without aggravating or reinjuring his hip.
"The hardest things for me were to try and figure out some things to do to help him with the hip injuries and all that and how to balance not doing too much," Millar said. "We wanted to do things that would benefit him without risking an injury. Certain exercises we did in the weight room had to be restricted and there were some other activities that seemed to aggravate it. I was well versed in what he had gone through, but it's like anything else, you try to put together a plan that doesn't put him at risk of injury and if something is going to hurt, it's something you just don't do. That part was simple to figure out. He has figured out some things he can do over the last year he can do so he let me know what he thought.
"The one thing I've seen that he is a really good competitor and kind of races at the level of where he is at. He's not afraid to go out and challenge, and that's the thing about track is you can look at the times and figure out where you rank in a certain race. You look at guys who have run 45.10 in the 400 and you know. But he has never looked at that and just run for third place. He has gone out and run as hard as he could so we could just see what would happen. That was kind of the strategy at the ACCs, because if you don't, you don't have a chance to win."
At the ACC Outdoor Track and Field Championships, held April 23 in Durham, Dodds finished fifth in the 400 meters with a time of 47.76. The 4x400m relay squad of Allan Lunkenheimer, Kevin Smith, Dodds and Sean Lunkenheimer turned in a strong performance in the final event of the ACC Championships, finishing fourth overall in a time of 3:13.32.
"In the relay, he probably ran the way he is more comfortable running which is a little slower in the first 200 meters and then use his strength in the final 200 to catch up. If he runs that way, I think he has the potential to run 46-plus in the next two weeks because he he's a really talented kid. I don't think he has scratched the surface of what he could do. He just hasn't had the opportunity to do it that long. I'm sure there was some adjustment to the way we trained this year, but he is our go-to guy this year, and I could always depend on him. Now that he is out of school and can focus entirely on training, I think he can benefit from that and we hope he improves and gets to the NCAAs."
To make the NCAA East Regional, Dodds has to qualify as one of the top 48 runners and is just shy of reaching that mark. He is running in some "last chance" meets over the next couple of weeks. Dodds had back-to-back third-place finishes on May 7 and 8 in the 400m run at the Dick Taylor Tar Heels Relays in Chapel Hill and the Duke Twilight Meet in Durham. He boosted his Saturday time of 47.94 to 47.87 on Sunday. Dating back to the finals of the ACC Championships, Dodds has had three consecutive results of less than 48 seconds in the event. He hopes to run 47.00 or better to virtually lock a place at the NCAA East Regionals.
"The times I ran in the two "last-chance" style meets were fast and close to my PR (personal record), but they still weren't fast enough," Dodds said. " Now it's looking like it's going to take a low 47-something to make it (to the regionals). I'd like to run 47 flat, and that would put me into the regional meet pretty comfortably, but in a race that short, that's a pretty big time gap because everything has to be perfect -- the weather has to be nice, the track has to be fast, so I really need to run about half a second faster than my PR -- which is 47.48 run last year at ACCs."
Dodds has a couple of more meets in which to try and earn the time he needs to extend his sporadic career. If it all ends on the track, a career in physical therapy will probably begin. Having gone through the rehabilitation of two different hip surgeries has had some influence on his career aspirations, and he has a unique perspective when it comes to helping other overcome injuries. That's his future plans. For now, it's all about running fast and extending a collegiate career that may have yet to peak.
"He's a very good competitor and doesn't get frazzled," Millar said. "He's pretty cool and that's what you need to do in the big meets -- reproduce what he's done in the past, and I'm hopeful we can extend his season a couple more weeks. That's the nice thing about the regional concept is that it does allow for performance and not based on one time and one place."
Players Mentioned
